How to drive awareness with marketers — Dan McGaw // McGaw.io

The middle of the funnel is where a lot of people get screwed because there’s not enough focus on the right content at the right time. That’s one of the key takeaways we learned in this episode as we speak with Dan. We also talked about modifying strategies for demand generation and the distinct features of marketers as target markets.
About the speaker

Dan McGaw

McGaw.io

 - McGaw.io

Dan is the founder and CEO of McGaw.io, an analytics and marketing technology consultancy. He has also previously served as CMO at Kissmetrics.com and VP of Growth at CodeSchool.com.

Show Notes

Quotes

  • “I think the biggest thing that people really mess up on is really the imagery that’s matched with a text. They kind of forget that people know how to read and they also make sure that they focus more on the images than they do the text. People are reading the text more than they’re looking at the images. You gotta make sure that the copy makes the most sense and you gotta focus on the value props as quickly as you can and the priority that your customers are going to see.” - Dan “The other thing I would recommend is when you’re looking at your site,  interview your customers, use the exact thing that they say and then put those on your website. Let your customers write your copy for you.” - Dan “I don’t think people read most of the descriptive text. To me what matters is how you’re headlining and describing.” - Dan  “I think the headline is really important but the prioritization of this headline is probably what’s even more important. Naturally when they see the value prop that really sticks out to them, they are gonna read that description. Like they will get more clarification in whatever they saw because they’re skimming for things that standout to them.” “I don’t think it’s fair to compare Instagram to your website. Instagram is a passive medium and it’s meant for images. Your website is found based upon the texts that are found on the website. Sure images are part of the design and the distraction but your website is meant to be read not scrolled through.” - Dan “What you need to do is customer development and follow what we call Steve Blank or Eric Reese model. You build customer development by asking non-leading questions and so you’re able to make your customers clearly describe their problems in their word and it’s really helpful to get that.” - Dan “That’s what's going to give your customers to stop and stick. The moment that you read what’s inside their head, they are going to immediately resonate with that and want to act on that. That’s why it’s important to really interview your customers.” - Dan “It’s one of big hang-ups I have is by not trying to sexy up the language by trying to make it as simple and clear as it possibly could be. I feel like there’s a trap for marketers trying to make their copy more impressive and sophisticated and really all that does is make it more confusing.” - Ben“I think what you’re talking about here is not just specifically talking to customers but people that are interested in your general products and services, or interested in that class of products. One of the things that I’ve done is go and specifically talk to existing customers and I will ask about their buying decisions.” - Ben “If you’re looking to optimize your funnel, first thing you do is do a bit of copy edit. You gotta talk to your customers about how they think about your products and services and repurposing their language and make sure you’re putting your value prop high to the page. Then, maybe in parallel you’re starting to clean up your messy spreadsheets using UTM.io.” - Ben“Stop staggering your content from left to right. You finish reading the copy on the left side of the page. Keep all your copy on the left inside of your page and then your images on the right side of the page. Don’t stagger the content back and forth.” - Dan “The last thing is, don’t over automate. We are humans, we are not robots. Keep automation as human as you possible can and make it simple.” - Dan “People are sending too many messages across too many different channels in too many different ways and they’re trying to make it so that it’s also super, super unique when it’s really not. We can tell that we’re being over automated. I’m not saying you should do more manual interactions.” - Dan “I think they key point there, look for a relevant signal when you’re sending out on a marketing automation that somebody actually wants information from you as opposed to, it’s time for you to send them another message.” - Ben

About the speaker

Dan McGaw

McGaw.io

 - McGaw.io

Dan is the founder and CEO of McGaw.io, an analytics and marketing technology consultancy. He has also previously served as CMO at Kissmetrics.com and VP of Growth at CodeSchool.com.

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